Rush Limbaugh falsely claims equal marriage has failed every time at referendum

Post your comment

Reader comments

Can he not be sued for misrepresentation? I’m fairly sure that would count as Libel in the UK, and since most people that want to shut others up come to the UK to sue for libel maybe the ACLU could try it?

Unfortunately, I disagree. His listeners will buy into everything he says, believing that they’re the majority and that we’re hated by most Americans. He’s playing on confirmation bias and selective verification, and these sorts of lies are powerful. For a cheesy comparison, it’s why people say that evil in the real world always wins – because the good guys have to play fairly.

His listeners believing his lies will get all the more of a surprise as their own states vote, by referendum, to pass equality laws, just as the US Election coverage on Faux News showed them questioning the result due to them believing their own lies.

American libel/slander laws actually work differently than those in the U.K. – it is the plaintiff whose burden it is to prove the defendant lied. And there’s really no such thing as a class action slander suit, since group animus and group defamation (including hate speech) are not actually illegal – the courts protect them as free speech. People can be sued for false advertising of a product or service, but political opinions are generally protected?

That said, I think Rush Limbaugh is a nasty scumbag. And as a radio shock jock he revels in that kind of backlash – he considers everything he does as part of the entertainment business. But as the American right wing has moved really far to the right in the past couple of decades, they have come to treat everything Limbaugh says as gospel, and he has become the de facto ideological leader of the Republican Party.

I know, right? He’s horrible. But nowadays if you live in a red state in the U.S., you dare not casually condemn him in public unless you want to provoke people’s fury. Modern American conservatives practically worship at the altar of Rush Limbaugh.

“On 7 March, the US west coast state of Washington followed Maine and Maryland in passing a referendum….”

I think PN means to say 6 November 2012 was the date these states all voted yes in referenda that took place during the US general election. Since you are calling out nimrod on his accuracy, the article should have been checked for its own accuracy.

Spreading misinformation and lies as Rush Limbaugh does is the last resort of a desperate homophobe who has no valid or genuine arguments.
Perhaps it’s a cry for help from someone who’s trying to hide something about himself that he feels ashamed of.

We have versions of him in the UK, hateful ignorant people like Dr. Sharon James who invents her own facts and passes them as truth. Then we have all the others in the Anglican and Catholic cults and Tory MPs in opposition (Loughton and Burrowes), and harridans Ann Widdecombe and Andrea Minichiello, the list is endless.

That said, Limbaugh is a disgustingly vile cretin who has been married three times and made his previous two wives sign a contract (paid them off) not to reveal the reasons why the marriages ended.

Yes – but you try getting a correction out of this rampant homophobe. What does this man’s obsession with homosexuality really tell us? Could it be that he is so full of self-loathing over the ‘gay thoughts’ he’s probably had that he has to turn that angst outwards at every opportunity? These people HAVE to win the argument at any cost. It’s more about self-delusion than anything else. And if that includes lying – so be it. His obsessive anti-gay rhetoric probably means he’s been lying to himself for years!